Documentary Editing

6Refining Select Reels

After you’ve gone through all your select reels and created your topic reels, take some time to watch through one of the new topic reels. At first it will likely feel bloated and uninspiring. Just because a bunch of things are happening related to the same topic doesn’t instantly make them revelatory. In fact, the very repetition of the theme may have the opposite effect of making it feel like your subjects are beating the topic into the ground. But have patience and keep watching; the magic of this process is that with the newfound clarity of being able to see these clips side by side instead of scattered throughout zillions of hours of footage your instincts will start to get sharper about what is truly relevant and how ...